Charles Krauthammer pleads: Mr. President, don’t go back to the U.N.

WASHINGTON—Don’t go back, Mr. President. You walked away from the United Nations at great cost and with great courage. Don’t go back.

No one knows when this war will end. But when it does, you’ll have to decide the terms. Yet in the last few days both you and Tony Blair have said you will seek a new U.N. resolution, postwar, providing for the governance of Iraq.

Why in God’s name would we want to re-empower the French in deciding the postwar settlement? Why would we want to grant them influence over the terms, the powers, the duration of an occupation bought at the price of American and British blood? France, Germany and Russia did everything they could to sabotage your policy before the war. Will they want to see it succeed after the war?

The Frankfurt Allgemeine reports that on Feb. 21, Germany’s U.N. ambassador, Gunter Pleuger, wrote his Foreign Ministry that the United States, blocked on a U.N. war resolution and fighting alone, would later “remorsefully return to the council” to seek help in rebuilding Iraq.

That is their game. Why should we play into it? And why return the issue to Kofi Annan, who had the audacity to declare the war illegitimate because it is supported by only 17 U.N. resolutions and not 18?